From the womb of her mother, Doņa Predicanda ya tenia el don, the healing gift. When she was born, her family concluded that her father's divining powers transferred to her. She was sent to live with her grandmother, an indigenous curandera from Chihuahua, Mexico. She grew up learning by her side, and unaware that the woman she called mother was actually her grandmother. Con sus manos calientes and spirit words and, as she notes, by God's grace, she has helped heal people of confounding illnesses.

After more than 60 years of healing, Doņa Predicanda doesn't have a business card nor a website that pronounces her a curandera. She still does not charge, as is the traditional way.

Doņa Predi was friends with the elder Emma, who was like an aunt to my family while we lived in Albuquerque. Emma would bring us homemade tortillas and her green chile and share remedies with me. She was like many of our mothers and aunts, the curandera of her family. She used to say that a curandera never pronounces herself as such or her powers may diminish. Decades ago, she and "Canda" helped to establish a free community clinic with Doņa Predi as the resident curandera that medical doctors refered patients to.

Eventually Doņa Predicanda became an elder to Kalpulli Izkalli, a community of families organized on Mexican indigenous principles, where we preserved our traditional knowledge and medicine by learning from each other and elders such as Doņa Predi. Eventually, some of us trained there as "promotoras tradicionales," or community health workers who promote traditional medicinal knowledge. We established certain guiding principles in accord with "the traditional and natural ways in which people participate in their own healing and wellness…. By recognizing that our bodies heal themselves, and that we only facilitate the process, we honor the ways of our foremothers and bring that knowledge to the present world.

Izkalli's projects include the Topahkal Health Collaborative, which offers a wide array of services and teachings. Today, it has a doctor and nurse practitioner on premise, who offer health care for a nominal fee, and the promotoras provide services of traditional medicine. Various circles of traditional and natural healers are associated with the kalpulli, offering services on a donation basis. The promotoras have been nationally recognized for their efforts to preserve and strengthen traditional medicine. Sylvia Ledesma, one of the kalpulli's caretakers of traditional knowledge and medicine, notes that traditional medicine remains a site of self governance within our communities: "Our healing methods are our community power."